TDH Part 1: How I got into Warcraft in the First Place

Back in the end of 2004, I never thought I'd like an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game for the uninitiated). I had a very low opinion of "Everquest", and an equally unflattering stereotypical opinion of those who played it. I liked real time strategy games first and foremost: I had been ranked in the top 1000 in "Starcraft" as an individual player and at several points been in the top 20 of the 2 man team bracket in Warcraft 3. The thrills of teamwork and competition were what kept me playing both of those games. They were/are akin to competitive sports rather than games. If you think I'm making this up, read this article on Slashdot. In my eyes, the contrast between an MMORPG like Everquest and an RTS like Starcraft was akin to that between a trekkie club and a semi-pro soccer league. (no offense to trekkies)

I was introduced to WoW (World of Warcraft) by one of my employees. A very talented young artist, Adam was one of those people who just played every single new hot game that came out on the market. He's the kind of person that you rely on to keep you in tune with the best of the indy music scene. He started playing World of Warcraft as one of our large client projects began to wind down after delivery. In the interest of sociability I joined him and several of his friends on "Malygos" server. I had heard that the male tauren (Minotaur) models were sometimes hard to see over in game, so I went for the female model. (Yes I am confident enough in my masculinity to admit that online.) My usual gamer tag "ProudAardvark" wouldn't fit, so I named her "Aardvarkina".

The game is addictive beyond belief. I'll talk about that in more detail in another post, but suffice it to say I'm almost positive that in my lifetime there will be video game addiction hearings in Washington DC akin to the analogous Tobacco ones. There will be incriminating internal memos from video game execs talking about how to increase the addictive properties of their games. Indeed, creating addiction is a basic component of game design.

As several weeks passed, I began to form a small social network in the game. The network consisted of two people that I knew in real life, and a whole slew of people that I knew only from their character names. Funkadelic, Bem, Imtan, Grisdelda, Sten etc. Indeed, friendships are extremely simple to start in an online world. You have a shared experience of playing the game, coupled with the familiarity of seeing the same people repeatedly. Its a socializing force not unlike a church or community group - shared experience and familiarity create community.

Pretty soon, I decided it would be fun to form a "guild": at that point I figured it would mean slapping a name onto our social group. But what would we call it?